


how the president died

by quadrille



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Assassination, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Same story, different era. The Kingslayer incident in a modern setting, with the throne as a wealthy corporation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how the president died

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2012, cross-posting it now.

When it happened, it happened in slow motion.  
  
He saw it all unfold before him like pieces on a chess board (and the moves seemed so astoundingly obvious in hindsight— _how could no one else see it?_  why didn't anyone else see it coming? it had been months, years, an absolute decade in the making, if not longer). The president stepped forward: still brisk and brusque even in his old age, long legs and long strides hurrying him down the street. Aerys Targaryen always moved like he had somewhere to be as of ten minutes ago, hurrying as if the hounds of hell were after him (and perhaps they were). It had been the cause of all his several heart attacks, the Westguard had joked. The man ran himself into the ground, into a hospital bed, and then dragged himself out by the nibs of his fingernails. Nothing could keep the dragon down.  
  
Except for, of course, a single bullet to the temple.  
  
He watched it happen in slow motion. The president hurrying down the street, head turning to bark more orders and scream more profanities (spittle flying from those lips and those yellowed teeth, the bodyguard had seen it over and over again more times than he could count) at his poor, harried personal assistant; stepping over a muddied puddle too base for the likes of him; shrugging into his finely tailored, Icelandic sheepswool coat.  
  
Head turning. In the distance, a shooter. Face grim, mouth set into a thin line, eye of the pistol already rising, held steady.  
  
_Had no one else seen it?_  
  
Duty would mean stepping into the line of fire. Or, at the very least, setting his broad shoulder against the president's narrow, frail side and shoving him bodily forward, aside, to the back, anywhere but within the trajectory of that bullet. It would be easy to do.  _It would have been easy._ Duty and responsibility would mean putting the president's life ahead of his own.  
  
But he'd seen too many things over the past ten years (yellowed teeth, spittle, bruises on the woman's face, the gleam of madness in the children's eyes, the fire, the sealed files that Aerys should never have let him read). And so, when the moment came—The Moment, as he would later think of it with a laugh, ever ironic and self-aware to the last—  
  
Then he simply stepped aside.  
  
Jaime Lannister watched the president fall, a bright blossom of red exploding from the place where his face used to be, staining that beautiful wool coat while the assistant screamed and screamed and screamed, and eyewitnesses would later report that the bodyguard even looked bored.


End file.
